I clearly remember the shock of realizing that everything my ex-husband, James Montgomery, had ever told me was a lie. I remember the devastation of discovering the truth: His entire purpose in marrying me was to get a free place to live, take advantage of my good reputation and defraud me of my assets. All the promises, all the assurances, were literally sweet nothings. They sounded good, and meant absolutely nothing.
I remember being paralyzed by my new truth. How could I possibly plan a recovery for my life, when every day I was falling apart? Worse, no one seemed to have an explanation for what happened, or advice on how to handle it.
It’s been 10 years since I left my ex-husband. I’ve now identified what I was dealing with—a sociopath. I read books that explained the disorder, such as Without Conscience by Dr. Robert Hare. But books with practical advice on how to cope with the trauma? They’re hard to come by. One of the best I’ve found, surprisingly, is Legal Abuse Syndrome, by Karin Huffer, M.S., M.F.T., which is now available in the Lovefraud Store.
Eight steps to recovery
The book was written to help victims cope with the betrayals and inefficiencies of the “justice system” after a violent or deceptive assault. Huffer contends that continuous assault by the legal establishment creates post traumatic stress disorder in the victim.
Well, the egregious assault of a sociopath created post traumatic stress disorder in many of us, whether we got involved with the legal system or not. So in the course of laying out a plan for overcoming legal abuse, Huffer also lays out a plan for overcoming sociopathic abuse.
Huffer identifies eight steps to recovery:
1. Debriefing. That means telling someone what happened, and that person listening without judgment.
2. Grieving. It is legitimate to grieve the loss of possessions, or our lifestyle, or our place in the community.We didn’t just lose things. We lost part of ourselves.
3. Obsession. Huffer suggests coping with obsession by compartmentalizing it—only allowing yourself to dwell in it for specific periods of time.
4. Blaming. This means putting blame where it belongs: on the perpetrator. The guilt, anger and rage needs to directed towards the person who deceived us.
5. Deshaming. The dreadful experience has taught us that some of our prior beliefs are false and need to be changed. When we do this, we change our attitude from “I was a fool” to “I’ve been wronged.”
6. Reframing. At this stage, you can look at your experience, define it differently, and then articulate the wisdom you’ve gained.
7. Empowerment. You take ownership of your problems, determine how you are going to cope with them, and go into action.
8. Recovery. With recovery, you are able to move forward in your life.
Protocol works
I spoke to the author, Karin Huffer, at the Battered Mothers Conference in January. It was the first time I’d seen her since finishing the book. I told her that, in my opinion, the eight steps she defined for recovering from legal abuse would also work in recovering from a sociopath.
Huffer agreed. In fact, she said that her program has now been out long enough to have proven itself. “The protocol works,” she said.
When we decided to add the Lovefraud Store to our website, one of the books that I really wanted to offer was Legal Abuse Syndrome. It explains why other people—even those who care about you—can’t listen to what you’re saying. It tells you how to place blame where it should be—on the predator. It tells you how to handle your obsessions. Oh, yes, and it tells you how to cope with legal shenanigans.
Legal Abuse Syndrome is now available, and I strongly recommend it—even if you aren’t in court with the predator who assaulted you.
Kathleen, Rune and Savannah:
Thank you for all of the advice. I really do have to get my mind together that he is who he is. My daughters and I are much better off.
Dear Meg,
The dreams you are having are NORMAL RESPONSES to the trauma you have been through. You are “trauma bonded” to him (get and read the book “The Betrayal Bond” it will help you so much just like the other one did!)
It takes MONTHS to get the ADDICTION out of your system and you will be vulnearable until you fix the part ofyou that they can HOOK INTO….it is a chemical response in your brain just like a junkie or a drunk! That “programming” that was done by the chemicals that the “love response” (in you) let loose BONDED/ADDICTED you to them. NORMAL response and the dreams are normal too.
I used to dream I was talking to my son, my mom, and all the others, trying to talk sense into them in my dreams. I ranted and raved in the day time as I would drive (Aloha did the same thing) “talking” out loud to them as I drove, thinking of things I wanted to say and wanted them to hear. I might as well have been talking to a fence post because there was NO WAY that they would have heard if they had been in the car with me, they are DEAF to our cries, our love, our words, our feelings.
It takes a while to get it out of your system so you can function and grow, but that is part of the process and CANNOT BE RUSHED. I wish it could. Some things just take time. You can’t “rush” getting a baby by getting 9 women pregnant and get a baby in a month, and neither can you rush the healing. It is like labor pains, YOU MUST GO THROUGH IT, YOU MUST EXPERIENCE IT, YOU MUST FEEL IT. But Meg, you will give birth to a NEW YOU! A stronger, better, wiser, person who is NO LONGER A SUCKER FOR THE HOOK! You will LOVE YOUSELF BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE, cause ifyou don’t love yourself FIRST you can’t truly love anyone. If we don’t love ourselves we become slaves to someone else to love us/ When that someone is a psychopath (no one who really loved themselves would put up with one when the red flags and abuse started to fly) we have only one way to go and that is into the abyss of pain. Now that we are crawling out of that abyss, seeing the light at the top and crawling hand over hand toward that light, we are doing something they can never do, and that is to change. They are so self focused and so toxic they don’t even know they need to change. They have no concept of what love is or how to get it. They just want someone to abuse—and I am NO LONGER VOLUNTEERING FOR THAT POSITION. I QUIT!!!! TOWANDA!!!
Oxy – I just read one of your other posts about giving advice vs. trying to fix others!
ME THINKS YOU ARE A WONDERFUL BEING! VERY INSIGHTFUL AND HELPFUL TO EVERY VISITOR, NEWBIE AND VETERAN OF THIS WEBSITE. WISH NONE OF US HAD TO BE HERE, BUT ITS COMFORTING KNOWING WE ARE EXACTLY WHERE WE NEED TO BE, IN ORDER TO RE-EMERGE INTO OUR OWN AND MOVE ON TO BETTER PLACES IN OUR LIVES AND WITH OTHER GOOD SOULS. BECAUSE WE DID IT OURSELVES, BY BEING OPEN TO ACCEPTING WONDERFUL ADVICE AND BY FOCUSING ON OURSELVES AND OUR OWN NEEDS TOO.
Dear learnthelesson,
Thank you! This place has been a very healing place for me, and if I can pass that healing advice and support on to others who are just getting started in the healing process it helps a bit to pay back what wonderful support I hve received here.
I am still here though not just to help others, but because this place is still helping me to heal and to grow in FIXING ME! (the only person I can fix!) I grew up in a dysfunctional household (even though I did have a wonderful step father) where enabling and “pretending we were a nice normal family” and that Uncle Monster did not beat and abuse his wife and kids, etc. then I gave birth to my own little psychopath (who thanks to God’s grace was arrested the first time he killed someone and is still in prison) and went through another 20+ years of hell-on-earth because I did not disengage from the family dysfunctions!
It was not even a thought tht I would or could truly go NO CONTACT with my mother, it wasn’t even considered an option….but I have DONE IT, and only now that I am NO contact with my “egg donor” that I can truly look back and see the REALITY of what I lived through, what I actually THOUGHT was “normal”—-so now I am having to re-parent myself, to learn what I should have learned as a youngster, and that was to set boundaries with family as well as outsiders. That thought also never really occured to me that it was even an option.
It is amazing what we can see when we finally get out of the FOG and start to see REALITY—it may not be pretty, but we CAN change it, but first we have to see and accept it as REAL.
On one of the blogs here someone wrote “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off!” and that is SO TRUE! I’m mostly moving out of the anger stage now, and focusing more on ME and less on THEM now, and learning to set boundaries and not feel guilty. I am also learning not to enable others, but to offer support and empathy for those in pain.
My spiritual walk with my faith has expanded exponentially as well because I no longer accept that my egg donor has the ONLY direct line to God and that I don’t have to go through her to reach Him. I don’t have to please her to please Him. That is such a weight off my back that it is unbelieveable. By age 5 or 6 I was terrified of my egg donor’s TERRIBLE VENGEFUL THOUGHT-READING UGLY MEAN “god”—and instead I have realized that I am the child of a LOVING, CARING, NURTURING GOD who is my heavenly father and loves me and wants me to be a better person, a more caring person. Now, I am no longer afraid of my egg donor’s “god” who I know is not THE God in heaven.
Wow Oxy – I cant even begin to imagine the journey youve been through. Safe to say for all of us that its true “What doesnt kill us, makes us stronger”… (or something like that! lol) I bet each and every one of us has been on quite the journey (in our past) as well as with the S/P… Each filled with heartbreaking moments as well as breathtaking healing moments within them. Im so glad that you feel you are moving out of the anger stage and focusing more on yourself, and setting boundaries and not feeling guilty. And that your spiritual walk with your faith has expanded. No longer having the fear you once had, must be something to behold! Good for you. Good bless you. And thank you for sharing your healing experiences with all of us. You certainly have helped me/encouraged me to work on my own healing these past few days.
Oxy, It’s good to know that people who are close to their moms don’t have a market on God, because I’m at VLC (very little contact) with mine. I am not a Christian, but I believe it says somewhere in the Bible, “If your right arm offends thee, cut if off.” I think you could substitute “parent”, “husband”, “son”, etc.
Big Hugs to newlife08 and akitameg
…and I really feel for the kids involved in these nightmares.
I don’t dream about my ex; I still have nightmares about being beaten, and I’ve been crying every day for over a week. I’m back to the doc on Monday for anti-depressants – he thought I was doing better.
I was in an office on Weds and a scuffle broke out. I completely lost it (it doesn’t help that it was a welfare office where I was being…oh, I won’t even get started on that).
It just doesn’t end.
It doesn’t help that I’ve only seen two people on three visits in over a month – aside from errands.
I can’t do this much longer. The 2-3 folks that do know that I was still seeing him think I should be farther down the road – the assault was 16 months ago…but most folks, work or social (unfortunately they’re one and the same), don’t know that we had still been seeing each other right up until two months ago, and then most of them believe him when he says I’m a psycho.
I’m terrified to meet new people, so I sit here broke and alone, unable to go anywhere or do anything.
I wish I were dead and quite honestly, the only reason I’m not is because he would win. He could ride that psycho story off into the sunset and no one would ever be any the wiser.
I didn’t deserve this – none of us did.
You are right, Star! That’s the thing I had to learn, is that the Bible (even if you are not a Christian) has some GREAT advice about how to live a good and healthy life, and letting someone else TWIST that advice to keep you allowing the to abuse you in the name of “honoring your father and mother” is just WRONG. I realize now that the way to “honor your parents” is to become the kind of person that would bring honor to a parent, not by becoming a victim to them.
In re-reading the Bible with an open mind, I realized that Jesus talked about “psychopaths” just not by that word. He said that if your brother (a fellow human) sins against you (abuses you) you should go to them and talk privately, and if that doesn’t work, take witnesses, and if that doesn’t work, go to the church (community) and the purpose of this is to get them to change their abusive ways, IF THEY DON’T LISTEN, He says to “treat them like a heathen, don’t even EAT with them” (if that is not the INSTRUCTONS FOR NO CONTACT I DON’T KNOW WHAT IS) and “forgiving” someone does not mean “forgetting it” or “pretending it didn’t happen” it means get the bitterness out of your own heart! FOR YOUR BENEFIT!
Bitterness and anger is bad for YOU. The directions in the Bible on how to live a healthy and good and peaceful life are valid whether you see it as religion or not. But some people (like my egg donor) twist religion into something like a club to beat others with. I am so glad I no longer see God as that big angry old man up there ready to send me to hell, but a loving father who cares for me. My sperm donor and my egg donor may not have been loving parents to me, but I AM NOT AN ORPHAN.
Dear PB,
I am so sorry you are feeling so down. I know the 16 months must feel like FOREVER. I’m not sure if you are getting any counseling or taking any antidepressants, but I would strongly advise you to be evaluated by a mental health professional. If you don’t have insurance, don’t let that stop you, find a community mental health service, there are some with sliding scales or even free. Believe me, as a mental health professional, it was doubly hard for me to accept the role of patient, but I had to do so, the stress build up and the chaos was more than any one human could handle alone, and I know you have had trauma that is above the “average” level of trauma and stress. To need help handling it is NORMAL AND EXPECTED. To be able to handle the levels of stress we have ALL had is “unbelieveable”
Life can be better, and it will get better, but just crawling in a hole (like I wanted to do, and actually did too much of) doesn’t cut it in the healing. Healing is ACTIVE work, not passive work…I wish I could say it was just “wait it out” but that won’t cut it. It is HARD WORK too. I’m glad you are here at LF and I know that this is a wonderful place, but I would also like to see you have some real face to face support and help ((((Hugs)))) IN the meantime, we are here fo ryou! Prayers and more hugs!
pb, I just saw your post. I am so very sorry you are going through this. Please be gentle with yourself and don’t worry about what other people think. I’m sure most of my friends would be flabberghasted if they saw me posting on this site so long after my break up with the S. You are suffering the effects of trauma. Do you have a therapist who is specifically trained to deal with trauma? In the meantime, while waiting for your reply, I’m sending a hug.